Call Up Yer Dead

My father’s study when he died suddenly at the age of 53: the flooring was red saltillo tile and the focus of the room was my father’s desktop computer, which was a larger IBM type model. In the early mornings before work and/or before my mother woke up, my father would sit at this computer to write his stories or to write e-mails to friends and family. My parents were semi-fanatic bridge players and the year before my father’s death (2002/2003) my parents discovered online bridge playing forums. This mostly meant that occasionally, instead of having friends over to drink, smoke, play bridge, and holler at each other until the wee hours of the morning on weekends, my parents would instead drink, smoke, play bridge online, and have only themselves or strangers online to holler at until the wee hours of the morning.

The study was lined with books, like many rooms in our house. The closet was filled with filing cabinets, which held paper copies of my father’s various writings and legal notes relating to his profession as a lawyer. I also know one drawer had my parents’ will and testament in it, as my mother would point this out to me any time they were leaving on one of their frequent trips together (“If we should die, our will is in there. You and Max will be going to live with your Aunt Terry in Buffalo.”) My favorite addition to the study in the late 90s was an arm chair that was covered in upholstery featuring illustrations of books and various book covers.

My father was not the type to have a workbench in a garage: his study was the one space in the house which could be designated as his realm and his alone. So it should not have been a surprise that in the weeks following my father’s death my mother went to his study to commune with him.

I was not living in Arizona when my father passed away, but I did stay in the house for a week when I came home for his funeral and the open house of mourning we held for days afterward. Late one night, I walked into his study to say goodnight to my mother. I had smelled the cigarette smoke and heard the clickity-clack of the older PC keyboard earlier in the evening, and I had assumed she was playing bridge online. At some point in what I had hoped to be a brief exchange, my mother informed me my father had e-mailed her.

I don’t even know if I actually said “what?” or “huh?” or if the look on my face sufficiently summarized my confusion. In my mind, I was trying to make sense of such a statement: I thought maybe he had emailed her in the hours leading up to his death and she was just now retrieving the message. This was more feasible then than it would be now, as it was before e-mail was readily retrievable via smart phone. In 2003, one could ostensibly go a few days without necessarily knowing one had new email to read.

But my mother cleared it up for me quickly: she had missed my dad and had written him a long e-mail. He had written her back!

My mother was absolutely hammered when she explained this to me. Apart from any license to drink presented by losing one’s spouse of over thirty years, my mother had spent large portions of my life being absolutely hammered. Combining this fact with my own grieving process at the loss of my father, the idea she was presenting to me in that moment was too much for me to handle. Unlike her, I had e-mailed with my father frequently since I had moved out of the house five years earlier to go to college. At that moment, perhaps in the bargaining stage of my grieving process, I would have given or traded something of immense value to actually exchange e-mails with my dad one more time.

Also, I was expecting my previously never-horribly-stable mother to eventually become completely unglued about my father’s unexpected passing. So her telling me she was now exchanging e-mails with him was potentially another step towards her breaking from reality all together. I was not ready to confront this reality, as it would surely continue to escalate.

One of my friends said to me during the first week my father died, “Everyone has their own grieving process. You should try not to begrudge others for their own process.” But I absolutely could not handle what my mother was proposing. I turned around, left the room, and hoped we would never speak of it again.

I succeeded in largely forgetting this incident until the fall of this past year, when I listened to an episode of This American Life about “The Phone of the Wind” in Otsuchi, Japan. The phone booth was set up by the cousin of a victim of the tsunami which devastated Japan in 2011. The phone line is not (physically) connected to anything else. The designer wanted somewhere he could try to talk to his cousin and have his words “carried on the wind”. My understanding is the phone booth continues to be used by many people to this day. People travel near and far to have the opportunity to speak with the dead in this telephone booth. No representations are made as to its effectiveness in the grieving process. People simply show up and speak out of faith and need. (I highly recommend listening to the show. With a box of tissue handy.)

Listening to the podcast made me realize the issue I really had the evening I walked into the study to learn my mother had been e-mailing with my dad from the great beyond. I so desperately wanted to feel like I had a way to still commune with my father. While I don’t think emailing with him after his death would have fit into my grieving process, I had been angry it was working for her. I had felt so connected to my father and his writing while he was living and the disconnect I already felt with the realization he would never write another word to me or anyone else was crushing in the time following his passing.

When I learned about the visitors of the phone booth in Otsuchi, I had only deep reverence and empathy for these people. The podcast helped me understand the process for what it was: when people die unexpectedly, the living are left with so much to say. Surely it is better to put these words to the wind than to hold them in our hearts forever.